Wal-Mart, beef jerky, and RFID

I was actually eating some beef jerky when I came across this eWeek story about a Wisconsin beef jerky company, RFID, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft. Behold:

Microsoft customer Jack Link's Beef Jerky, a supplier to Wal-Mart, Target and the U.S. Department of Defense, is moving into the second phase of a four-part RFID project, with expectations of achieving ROI (return on investment) over the year ahead.

As we reported on some time ago, Wal-Mart is moving to mandate that all of its suppliers use RFID by 2006. Smaller suppliers, like the aforementioned beef jerky company, are going to have a tough time meeting those goals in the required timeframe. In many cases, it means a serious retooling of the company's inventory system, complete with new software and hardware purchases. The eWeek article gives a brief peek into what this is going to look like for one small business, which is moving to some Microsoft package that I hadn't previously heard of.

I actually know a guy who did pretty well for himself by going in with some friends and starting a company to do contract work for exactly this sort of thing. When a whole slew of small- to medium- businesses gets a blanket mandate from Wal-Mart that'll ruin them if they don't comply, this guy and his coworkers focus on doing as many of these jobs as possible before the deadline, billing a fixed sum for each job and moving as quickly and painlessly as possible from one job to the next. I say this, because I bet that there are at least a few Ars readers out there who could make a killing by specializing in RFID conversions for Wal-Mart suppliers. Anyway, it's a thought.